'Burke and Hare,' 2 stars

"Burke and Hare" is a waste of a good cast and a better story, as well as a hollow reminder of how John Landis seemingly has lost his touch.

'Burke and Hare'

Bad:

Director: John Landis.

Cast: Simon Pegg, Andy Serkis, Tom Wilkinson.

Rating: Unrated.

Note: At the Royale.

Simon Pegg always is worth watching, as he is here, playing half of a real-life con-man team that gets into the briefly lucrative body-procuring business in early 19{+t}{+h}-century Edinburgh, Scotland. But the movie is out of touch, uninspired -- and this from the guy who back in the day directed such movies as "Animal House" and "An American Werewolf in London" that tapped into popular culture with precision.

The latter is the more apt comparison. The story of two American college students backpacking across Europe is funny, gory and scary -- one man is killed by a werewolf, the other bitten, which means he'll soon be a werewolf, too. Many of the same elements are in play in "Burke and Hare," based on a true story, but now, 30 years later, the humor falls flat, the gory bits are mostly forced. It's not a horror movie, so we can't really expect it to be scary. We can, however, expect it to be good, and it's not.

It's just not enough of anything.

William Burke (Pegg) and William Hare (Andy Serkis) are Irish immigrants seeking their fortune in Scotland. It doesn't go well until they hit upon providing corpses for Dr. Robert Knox (Tom Wilkinson), who needs them for his anatomy lectures. The problem is, not enough people are dying, or at least not dying fast enough, so the two resort to more nefarious means. Thus, Scotland's most notorious mass-murdering spree is set in motion.

Knox is in competition with another doctor (Tim Curry), and there are nods to the political complexities that have resulted in the run on corpses. Burke falls for Ginny (Isla Fisher), a prostitute who wants to put on an all-woman production of "Macbeth." (Hare is married; his wife, played by Jessica Hynes, eventually gets in on the scheme as well.)

For some reason Landis has the cast play what could have been a genuinely creepy movie almost as camp; Pegg, in particular, who co-wrote and starred in the brilliant "Shaun of the Dead," would know better, you'd think.

Maybe Landis is simply out of practice -- he hadn't directed a full-length dramatic feature since "Susan's Plan" in 1998. That's a shame. But if "Burke and Hare" is any indication, he has some work to do to get back into the game.